What Can Be Done Now?

I don’t expect perfection. I know doctors are human, mistakes happen, and surgery always carries risks. I signed the paperwork before my DIEP Flap surgery in 2020, fully aware of what I was agreeing to. I don’t believe in rolling the dice, getting craps, then suing. I don’t want to look back with blame. I want to look forward. My only question is: What can be done now?

I keep hitting walls

That’s where I keep hitting walls.

After my DIEP Flap and subsequent cleanup, I developed a bulge on the right side of my abdomen. A hernia formed beneath it, which was later repaired. At that time, the surgeon told me the bulge was caused by weak muscles. But here’s the strange part: the more weight I lose and the more I exercise, the larger the bulge gets. Instead of tightening, it grows.

So I went to my primary care doctor, who ordered a CT scan. The report came back: scar tissue. I don’t buy it. Scar tissue doesn’t double in size just because I went for a walk and ate dinner. What was once so small that my surgeon could barely perceive it is now the volume of a size A bra cup. Am I supposed to start wearing a strapless bra around my hips?

The truth is, scar tissue doesn’t change with digestion, but this bulge does. It grows, it hurts, and it interferes with how my body processes food. That’s not a static scar. That’s something dynamic.

And yet—silence.

The silence started less than a week after my DIEP Flap surgery. I was bloating so badly that I could barely eat six bites at a time before pressure in my stomach made me stop. My doctor sent me to the ER, where they ran an X-ray. I’m allergic to metal, and that was in my chart. The ER doctor verified my allergies when I was admitted. But after looking at the film, her demeanor changed completely. She went quiet. She told me everything looked “normal for post-surgery” and that I should follow up with my doctor. I was not allowed to see the X-ray. To this day, I suspect something metal was left inside me—whether a locator pin or another device that “normally” gets used but that no one wanted to admit to in my case.

That moment set the tone for everything that followed. Silence. Evasion. Assurances that don’t match my lived experience.

I’m not looking for someone to point fingers. I know things can go wrong in the operating room. What I need now is honesty about my current reality so we can move toward a solution. Instead, I feel like I’ve been shut out from the truth. Without that truth, there’s no path forward. It shouldn’t be this hard just to get a straight answer.

So here I am, still asking the same question I asked five years ago: What can be done now?